1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for tracking allotted wireless telephone minutes used and alerting an individual user or an account administrator before overage charges are accrued.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Telecommunication service providers typically offer service plans with metered peak minutes during high weekly usage periods and unlimited off-peak minutes during low usage weekly periods to level the distribution of available bandwidth over the time period. Other plans offer metered anytime wireless telephone minutes. In packaged, wireless service plans the fees for excess usage are extremely high. It is therefore very important to many users that they have current information about their metered call minutes. In the absence of such information, individual users can roll up hundreds of dollars and businesses thousands of dollars in unexpected and unwanted excess fees each month.
Some wireless phones are outfitted with timers but they do not account for the “minute rounding” applied by the service provider. For example, if the call duration is one minute and fifteen seconds, the service provider will debit the user's account for two minutes, the industry standard being one-minute rounding. In addition, the user must remember to activate the timer for each call, whether incoming or outgoing, as the user is charged for both, and distinguish between whether the call is during peak or off-peak times.
Many telecommunication service providers offer a web-based lookup system for monitoring allotted minutes that have been used and/or provide a call feature that connects to an automated customer support desk which provides account information from an accounting database. Both systems require the user to be proactive in keeping track of minutes used. In addition, the call to the service provider may result in additional wireless charges. Service providers have little or no incentive to alert the user of impending overage charges because they are very profitable. In addition, individual usage is sometimes inconsistent. A user with overage charges one month may upgrade to a more expensive plan, with more minutes than are actually needed based on average needs, which also benefits the service provider.
Businesses often purchase or lease large numbers of wireless phones for use by their employees. Typically the phones are on service plans from different service providers because of regional differences in cellular telephone coverage. Controlling, or at least monitoring employee usage of the wireless phones is important for controlling business expenses but administrative costs are high. Existing management techniques are generally manual and involve one or more employees evaluating the invoices. Calling the various service providers to monitor allotted minutes used for each telephone on a current basis is simply not feasible with a fleet of phones because the labor costs would likely wipe out whatever management benefit might be obtained. Like the service providers, individual employees may have little incentive to avoid overage charges since it is difficult for the employer to detect or keep track of excessive use.